


He Just Let It Die.

by Anonymous



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Other, Unhealthy Relationships, bartinder, she's a lightweight, venting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 07:42:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11226417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Someone comes to visit Grillby's bar and gets lost in her own recent failed relationship. Grillby offers his support as he listens to her complicated tale of wasted time and woe.





	He Just Let It Die.

“… Um. Hi.”

Grillby turns to look at his new customer. Humans are getting more and more common in his new bar on the Surface these days. The orange and yellow fire elemental saunters over to his newest slack-jawed patron.

“… What can I get for you?” he asks smoothly.

She snaps her mouth shut and rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Okay… Sorry for staring. I just didn’t expect you to be, um… _Fire_.”

He rumbles a charming laugh at that. She takes a cautious step forward and claims a barstool in front of him. It’s not too busy yet so there’s plenty of space.

“I hope this isn’t too insensitive, but um… Do you do daiquiris?”

He nods, a fine white flame of a smirk crossing his burning complexion.

“Oh good, because, I wasn’t sure. I mean, fire, _ice_ …”

The well-dressed elemental holds up a finger to halt her, then he grabs the metal scoop for the ice bin and holds it out to show his new patron. She chuckles a laugh.

“Well, that solves that problem. I like a man who thinks ahead.”

“… We have peach, lime, strawberry, and raspberry,” he answers her earlier question.

“Let’s start with peach, then. I wanna get _sloshed_ as immediately as possible.”

* * *

 

He had to cut her off after two, as her speech began to slur and her gestures more wild than he anticipated. Now she’s just sipping water and venting about her day.

It turns out she’s in the middle of a nasty separation from a man she bought a house with and was engaged to. Where her ex-spouse had seemed amiable and cooperative before, he had apparently decided to try and squeeze every benefit he could out of the legal separation once he moved himself out of their shared home. Demanding spousal support when he left her with all of the expenses, harassing her or sending family to do the same at the house still being divided between them, even claiming entitlement to half of her locked in retirement fund. She had showed him the lengthy e-mail _dripping_ with narcissistic entitlement and he was beyond belief that a former lover could behave so selfishly.

“… I’ve started just sending the bullshit he spews right to my lawyer,” she continues. “I mean, his lawyer has a right to know how abusive her client is, right?”

“… Of course.”

“Look,” she continues, taking out her phone again. “I posted on Facebook that I wanted to rehome my rabbit, because I’m not sure I can afford to take care of her, and within thirty seconds of making that post, he sends me this.”

Grillby takes the phone in his hands again and scrolls through the conversation, grimacing at the language used. At first it seemed like this gentleman was trying to placate her, offering a new cat in exchange for both a rabbit and a dog. But when she refused and said only the rabbit was available for the cost of a recent veterinarian checkup and supplies, the tone changed to one more blatantly manipulative. Petty claims that she never wanted the dog in the first place, and him obviously trying to inspire guilt for denying him.

“I didn’t want a dog at first due to bad experiences with them as a kid,” she mumbles, sinking into her arms against the counter. “But he ignored her so much she became attached to my hip, and now I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“… How did all of this begin?”

“Hm?” She looks up. “Oh… Well, it was a slow decline. We bought the house together and… It was like, he just stopped caring? Like I didn’t exist anymore except to make him dinner. I told him, I told him _so many times_ , that I needed some affection from him. I needed him to spend time with me, I needed him to hold me once in a while, to touch me. I needed _any amount_ of affection from him than _nothing_ , and he continued to _give me nothing_. I even had to point out to him at one point that we’d literally not even had sex in three straight months and it still didn’t even seem to register that this was a serious problem to me. I was starving for contact from my fiancé and he wasn’t doing anything to help. He just let it die.”

The bartender flusters a little at the mention of sex, but he quickly smooths out his tie and composes himself. “… Why would he deny you?”

“Every time I confronted him about it, which was a lot of times, he would say he was in some sort of indescribable ‘mood’. I offered to help him out with that – I’m not a psychologist, but I read a lot of articles on mental illness – and he snubbed me. I asked him if it was depression and he said no. I didn’t think he was depressed, but I was really reaching by that point. I finally got so sick of hearing about it, and him not letting me try to help me, that I got so frustrated I told him to see a shrink.”

“… Did he?”

“ _No!_ ” she shouts, slapping a hand against the counter and sitting up straight. “And he had the benefits that would pay for it, too! He’d always been telling me to use them for my own depression, but he refused to do anything about the problem!”

Grillby hums, digesting that. “… If he acknowledged his mood was at fault, and you were becoming angry with him for his lack of consideration in the relationship, then why did he not do something to resolve it?”

“Because it wasn’t really a mood or a mental problem _at all_ ,” she growls. “He was just a selfish asshole who preferred to watch the West Wing or Friends on Netflix or playing _Diablo three_ with his friends twenty-four-seven to doing _anything_ with me at all!”

“… Then why call it a relationship?”

“That was a question _I_ asked _him_ several times, and he’d just insist he was ‘trying’ and that he loved me. He didn’t give a shit about me, he just liked me cleaning house and bringing him dinner.”

She sinks onto her elbows and buries her face in her hands. The shaking of her shoulders betray her muffled sobs before the tears can fall and hit the counter. Grillby reaches out and grips her shoulder.

“I wasted _five years_ of my _life_ on that asshole…” she whimpers.

Unsure of what else to do, he rubs her arm through the fabric of her jacket. She seems to remember herself and pulls her hands away, wiping her face on her sleeve and looking away from the flaming bartender.

“Damnit, I’m sorry. Wow, _that’s_ embarrassing…” she redirects, evidently trying to pull herself together.

“... Don’t be ashamed of yourself,” he soothes. “It sounds as if you were the one to put all of the effort into the relationship and gained nothing from it. Now, however, this… I dare not call him a _man_ lest it offend _all other men_ to exist, but it seems he would rather take advantage of this situation to claim undeserved profit.”

She sighs, pulling her arms away and folding them across her body. Grillby already misses the tender contact, but understands that she may just need her space.

“You know… We were going to have _kids_ and everything, too,” she mutters, eyes becoming wet once again.

He’s… Well, he’s at a loss for words.

“That’s why we got such a nice house. Three bedrooms, for at least two kids of our own. That’s one of the reasons why I tried so hard to salvage things… I didn’t want to give up on that dream. I’ve always wanted to start a family of my own.”

“… I regret my need to ask, but… Was he looking forward to children as well?”

“He told me so, or else I wouldn’t have ever bothered dating him. It would’ve been over before it even started,” she clarifies. “I know he did too, because he started talking about nursery colours without my prompting, at least once. The only part of that we didn’t agree on was timing – We had a house, we both had good jobs, there was no reason not to – I felt like he just wanted to put it off for forever.”

“… Why was that?”

“A lot of dumb, selfish reasons,” she continues. “He didn’t want to ‘share his toys’, he wanted to pay off debt first – which was _never_ going to happen unless he got his spending habits under control – he wanted to go back to school first, but he wouldn’t actually put the effort into applying. He just kept moving the goal post back on me and I was getting really frustrated. I didn’t want to force it on him but we already waited _five years_ – I didn’t want to wait five _more_.”

She relaxes her arms and lets her hands fall into her lap, sighing.

“I made him promise to come with me to a doctor’s appointment regarding that, on what would’ve been our fifth anniversary. But I got so tired of him ignoring me, so tired of him neglecting our dog, that I gave him the ring back in April.”

“… That seems for the best,” he agrees.

She nods. “I would’ve had a baby right now if I had waited a month, but I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad it wasn’t with him. I have my dog and my rabbit still – they’re the only babies he ever bothered to give me and I wouldn’t trade ‘em for the _world_.”

At this she smiles and reaches for the cellphone on the counter, sliding it back towards herself. He watches curiously as she unlocks it again, then opens up a photo album. Grillby chuckles at the first image displayed.

“… What a handsome little creature,” he grins. The phone is full of pictures of a small black dog. There are even short videos of its various antics.

“She only ever wants to sleep on my lap or my tits, and she cuddles me in the bed all night. How could I _ever_ give up my baby girl?”

“… I can see how strong the bond is between the two of you,” he agrees, humming pleasantly. The current photo has her with the dog suspended in her arms, resting her small sleepy head against her shoulder. “She may as well be your child.”

“… She makes me really happy. I don’t know if I could’ve gotten through any of this without her.”

He’s about to say something when she startles and holds out a hand for her phone. He releases it easily, and she taps the screen a couple of times to check the time. “Ah, crap. I should really be getting home. She gets anxious if I’m not there and she’ll want to go outside pretty soon,” she explains. “How much do I owe you for the drinks?”

“… Twelve dollars will suffice.” That would be the price of one drink plus tax.

“Twelve? That’s pretty generous.”

He shrugs as she digs through her bag. She slaps a twenty dollar note on the counter, failing to find anything smaller. Grillby accepts it, making change, but she holds out a hand.

“Give me five back, and we’ll call it even, okay?” She seems insistent on paying him more fairly. He rumbles a soft laugh as he nods, offering her a five dollar note for her change. “Thanks. … Sorry, I just realized I never got your name.”

He inclines his head in a slight bow. “… You may call me Grillby.”

She blinks once, then visibly pales. “ _Grillby?_ Like the sign outside?? _THE Grillby!?_ ”

Laughing more now, he nods, confirming her assessment.

“Oh my _god_ I just blurted out my whole life story to the _owner_ …” she whines. “I’m so sorry to saddle you with all that baggage…”

“… It is no trouble at all.”

“Well, I’m sorry anyways. That’s just embarrassing,” she groans. “Uh, I should… I should just go.”

She turns away and he reaches a hand out to stop her, but she misses the gesture entirely. “… One moment!” he calls, a little louder than he’s used to.

The human woman turns slightly, stopping in her tracks.

“… You never told me your name,” he reminds her.

“Oh… Um, I’m Daphne,” she blushes. “Thanks for listening, I guess.”

“… Daphne,” he straightens, then bows more formally at the waist. “It has been an absolute pleasure. Feel free to return at any time.”

When he opens his eyes again she’s in complete shock. Some of his regulars have entered the bar since then, but so has his staff, enabling him to keep his attention on her. They all seem to turn and freeze at the curious display.

She grips the open side of her coat and covers the lower half of her face in some shy gesture, clearly unused to being under any kind of spotlight. “Th-thanks!” she calls back.

He watches her every step as she leaves, pleased to be of some support to her in this troubling time, finding a glass and polishing it absently.

He wonders if she will find the peace in life that she’s looking for, and sincerely looks forward to hearing how the next part of her story develops.


End file.
